3 Effective Website Content Tips
If you want to create effective website content, keep these tips in mind!

1. Engage Visitors Immediately—When a visitor lands on your website, you have just a few seconds to capture—and keep—that person’s attention. Website content has to be engaging, complete with catchy content and visual appeal. Use a visual element to draw the visitor in and keep him there by providing concise, easy-to-read tidbits of information that are genuinely interesting and useful.
2. Use with Objectivive Language—People search the Internet looking for information, not to provide website owners with an opportunity to sell them something. While browsing they’re likely to come across many sites where the copy is filled with flowery statements and exaggerated claims. What they are looking for useful information that can be trusted. Use a journalistic writing style, speaking in a tone that is authoritative and objective to begin building trust with visitors.
3. Embed Internal Links—Rather than expecting visitors to find their way around your website on their own, make it easy for them to learn more about how your company can meet their needs by using an internal linking strategy. Hyperlink key phrases so that readers can simply click to find targeted information on your site easily. After all, the longer you keep visitors on your website and the more you can educate them about what your company has to offer, the better you’ll be able to improve conversion.

Mary Gormandy White is co-founder of Mobile Technical Institute, where she works with clients throughout the U.S. as a professional trainer, consultant, and speaker, focusing on topics related to HR, management, and public relations. She has extensive professional writing experience and is the author of 101 Human Resource Management Tips and 101 Successful PR Campaign Tips in the LifeTips book series.

Image from hothardware.com

What makes Seth—and bloggers like Chris Brogan, J. Money, and others—stand out?

1. They aren’t afraid to be themselves. We’ve all read about the importance of transparency, but transparency is more than revealing a few secrets about what you do in your spare time. Your marketing content should be uniquely “you.” And yes, a good freelance writer can be “you” on your blog as well as you can (if not even better!). You don’t get much more transparent than these birthday videos from Chris Brogan in a recent post.
2. They are short but sometimes not-so-sweet. This ties in with Number One on this list. It’s okay to be brutally honest if that’s who you are. If you have something to say, get to the point. Skip the niceties.
3. They are truly original. We’ve all heard the expression, “There are no new ideas.” But guys like Seth Godin have a way of putting a new spin on old standards that makes their ideas feel new and revolutionary. If you want to keep people reading your marketing content, be different. (Or, as Seth says, “Be remarkable.”) Go crazy. Take chances.
4. They create marketing content that is easy to remember and easier to share. I never feel like I’m asking a favor of people if I suggest they read Seth’s blog. Instead, I feel like I’m doing something nice for them, because they’ll learn something important or, at the very least, walk away smiling.

Dawn Allcot is a full-time freelance writer and blogger. She frequently writes about technology, business, parenting and paintball.

Image from pharospartners.com

Today, companies want to reach consumers as well as the press. But that doesn’t mean the press release is dead—it just has a new name. It’s called a news release, and it’s been SEO optimized, just like other SEO content, to get better rankings in Google.

What’s the difference between a press release and a news release?

A press release:

• Targets the media
• Includes a captivating lead
• Whets the reader’s appetite to learn more

A news release:

• Targets conventional media, bloggers, and end users of the product or service covered
• Includes a captivating lead
• Includes a call-to-action that sends readers to the company website or encourages them to buy the product or service

You can see that news releases and press releases aren’t very different from each other. They also share another thing in common: both should be written by a professional freelance writer or content agency you hire to help you with marketing, promotions, and SEO rankings.

Why Hire a Professional Freelance Writer?

A freelance writer understands all the elements that go into making news releases—and other SEO content—shine. A freelance writer will optimize your press release with links, keywords, and that all-important call to action. When you hire a freelance writer—especially a well-established professional who works with a top content agency—you’ll know you’re getting a news release designed to appeal to your target market, bloggers, and conventional media for maximum impact.

A freelance writer or content marketing agency can also help you distribute your press release. With so many news releases issued by so many different companies every day, it’s more important than ever to make sure yours stands out.

Dawn Allcot is a full-time freelance writer and blogger. She frequently writes about technology, business, parenting and paintball.

Image from rheinstaedter.de

Maybe you’ve heard about Facebook’s problems of late. Complaints about the social networking giant’s treatment of its users’ information have been brewing for a while, but hit a crescendo around April when CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would be deepening its connections with partner sites—whatever that means. Consumer watchdog groups, members of Congress, and the Federal Trade Commission have all expressed concerns over Facebook’s privacy policies, or lack thereof. Recent changes to Facebook’s privacy policies, including cutting the number of settings from 50 to about 15, and reducing the number of pages users have to sift through from 7 to 3, have not satisfied the more vocal critics.

In addition to the bad PR, this whole privacy fiasco—and things like Quit Facebook Day—could spell money trouble down the road as well. The bulk of Facebook’s revenue comes in the form of advertising dollars. Advertisers love Facebook, and its 400 million global users. When a user creates a Facebook profile, information gets handed over to the site—and its partners. Yes, and you didn’t think anyone really cared that you like to travel, take long drives, and eat ham sandwiches, did you? Somewhere out there, however, is an advertiser that cares very much. It is this information that allows advertisers to easily break down users’ demographics and tailor their advertising—this gives them a huge ROI.

What Facebook has seemingly failed to do is find that happy medium between respecting its users and providing advertisers with useful information. If Facebook just hands over users’ information to the advertisers willy-nilly, then eventually people will stop using the site, and advertisers will move on to the next big thing. However, if Facebook overcompensates and becomes less advertiser-friendly, the same outcome will occur. If Facebook had just respected its users’ information from the very beginning,  advertisers wouldn’t have gotten used to having such free reign over their market. See? There is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

Of course, 23, 384 people out of 400 million isn’t likely to make a huge dent in Facebook’s wallet, but Quit Facebook Day could be a sign of a trend, and Facebook needs to learn to walk a razor-thin line between its commitments to its users and to its partners.

Lesson learned—know (and respect) thy audience.

Image from sdow.semanticweb.org

If you hire an outside content marketing agency to supply articles and blog posts for your website, these tips will help you evaluate writers, so you know you’re getting website content that works.

1. Avoid jargon. Emphasize keywords in your website content, but avoid jargon exclusive to your industry. Customers and prospects visiting your site may not understand what you mean. Speak in plain language.
2. Avoid buzzwords and catch phrases. Buzzwords can make your writing sound dated. Even though tweets on Twitter have a half life of just a few minutes, website content attracts visitors for years after it’s written. When “perfect storm” or “stimulus” or “guru” has fallen out of vogue, your words will continue to haunt you on the site and in Google searches forevermore. There’s another good reason to substitute a buzz word with a more specific phrase, highlighted in this article: Your audience tunes it out. You can do better than the word of the minute. Be creative. Coin your own catch phrase, wait for it to go viral, and eventually, turn into a cliche. You can do it. Just think outside the box. (Kidding!)
3. Write about benefits. Benefit-oriented writing—especially in your headlines, but throughout the copy, too—sells your product or service in a subtle way. Don’t save the marketing for sales-specific pages. Keep reminding people what your product or service can do for them. Good website content doesn’t take a break from soft-selling.

Dawn Allcot is a full-time freelance writer and blogger. She frequently writes about technology, business, parenting and paintball.

Image from walyou.com

Ever hear the saying “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink”? Sure you have. And you’re probably well aware of how that old saying applies to your customers, and how the methods you use to attract their interest have the potential of failing miserably if not carried out properly. But are you aware that there are content marketing strategies in place that’ll have that horse lapping at your pool so fervently that you might have to bring in a fire hose to keep up with demand? If not, read on for a few tips on effective content marketing.

Give it Away
This might be the most difficult piece of content marketing advice for you to digest, but just remember how hard you fought when Mom tried to make you eat your veggies. In the end, she was right. And so is this. Nobody’s suggesting that you give away your services, or hand over any secret recipes. But hoarding information isn’t in anybody’s best interests. Besides, doesn’t the law of giving tells us that everything we put out is returned in equal measure? Try blogging about a few best practices you’ve picked up over the years. You might be surprised at what you get in return.

Keep it Real
All too often, people confuse the need to be professional with the need to keep their customers at arms length. This can be the kiss of death, especially for a small business looking to expand their horizons. When developing marketing content for your website, remember that it’s entirely possible to command attention and authority without sounding stuffy and stand-offish. Adopting a relaxed, human voice is a content marketing strategy that has the potential of turning occasional customers into lifelong fans.

Vince Font is a freelance writer with a burning desire to teach the world the difference between there, they’re and their. He currently resides in Utah with his wife, two dogs and a mouse he’s convinced the D-Con didn’t get rid of.

Image from adelineyenmah.com

Kevin Smith: He's Mad As Hell. Image from ViewAskew.com

I’ve never been one to suggest that “the customer is always right.” Having worked as a cashier in my high school years (an experience I think every North American should have), I can tell you emphatically that the customer is indeed not always right. Sometimes the customer is just plain wrong. And mean. And even a complete idiot.

But just because bad customers exist does not mean a business can or should counter them with bad customer service. The danger in allowing any level of poor customer service to be dished out is that it’s too easy for employees and business owners to stay in that mode and become indignant to customers who may not fit the mold of your ideal client, but are, in fact, right about a situation and what they should expect from you.

Before, if you screwed over a customer, the most you could expect is that you lost their business. Perhaps they’d tell their friends. If they were REALLY angry, they’d write a letter to somebody. Not any more. With the gaining popularity of social media, word of mouth now has a microphone. Give someone crappy service, they’re going to get loud about it, and some people have pretty impressive microphones.

This weekend, writer / director Kevin Smith was asked to leave a Southwest Airlines flight on account of a “safety issue.” The safety issue? Someone at Southwest determined Smith was too large for just one seat and required two – but as a second seat was unavailable, they opted to eject him from the flight. They did this, despite the fact – according to Smith – that he fit into one seat and between the armrests – the apparent gauge of measurement Southwest uses to determine whether a “Customer of Size” requires more than one seat.

While still in the airport waiting for the next flight, Smith took to Twitter, where he has 1.6+ million followers (a good chunk more than Southwest’s Twitter feed has) and started describing his experience in the colorful language Smith is well-known for.

Hundreds of people started tweeting Smith with their own humiliating stories of Southwest’s treatment, with a fury not entirely unlike the “Mad as Hell!” scene from Network, which Smith was only too happy to retweet to his followers.  Southwest reacted with a blog post, one that many people, based on the comments, felt was inappropriate and lacking. While we’re the first to applaud content marketing and social media usage, the emphasis is on content. Smith provided his full side of the story, complete with a part about a fellow Southwest passenger who experienced the same treatment on Smith’s flight, in his latest podcast SModcast #106 (in case you weren’t sure, the language within it is NSFW, so plug those headphones in!).

An ineffective customer service issue has now become a giant PR crisis. Happy Monday, Southwest.

Smith is hardly the first to take to Twitter, Facebook, blogs or Podcasts to complain about sub-standard customer service. Heather Armstrong, a blogger behind the exceptionally popular site, Dooce, let Maytag have it when the company was less than responsive when her new washing machine broke in late August. And it’s not just “celebs” who are taking a stand when customer service has failed them. Yours truly received better service from Netfirms after snarking on Twitter about how lame my service experience had been. A friend of mine received local news coverage after complaining about a restaurant’s treatment of a customer via her blog and Twitter.

Want to avoid this? What should you do if you own a business?

1. Treat each customer as if they might have a million Twitter followers. They might. Or they might be friends with someone who does. Or the “pithy” 400 followers they do have might retweet to their followers and theirs and so on. After all, that’s how the Motrin scandal got started – by non-celeb social media users.
2. Review your policies. Take a look at your policies and see if there are any aspects of them that would give your customers a legitimate reason to be upset. If those policies can’t be changed, make sure they are communicated to customers and staff clearly and that you have a sensitive and consistent way of enforcing them.
3. Expect more from your staff. Train them well. Check up on their service. Give them incentives to treat customers well such as stock / ownership options or bonuses.
4. Don’t be afraid to apologize and admit where you went wrong.
5. Make sure you’re engaged in social media monitoring. To its credit, Southwest has been monitoring and involved in social media and this situation. Is it handling it right? You be the judge!
6. Take care of the customer in question first, and the public interest in the scandal second. According to Smith, the top customer service executives at Southwest had NOT contacted him despite the blog post suggesting they had. Certainly give your audience a heads-up in the medium they’re using (Twitter) that you’re aware and dealing, but make sure that first customer is prioritized.
7. Understand crisis communications in a web 2.0 world. Take a look at our tips for avoiding a social media faux pas and tips for reacting to a social media bomb, part 1 and part 2.

Team Conan is in the Lead. Image from BittenandBound.com

In life and business, things are not always sunshine and lollipops (and if that’s news to you, I’d like to switch places with you for a week, please). While public relations is most frequently used to announce good, fun things like product launches and events, PR is also utilized to deal with tough issues.

As you’re probably aware, NBC has one of these tough issues on its hands: it has three evening variety shows and a schedule that’s not working well for anyone. To combat this, NBC suggested bumping everyone back – a move that greatly tests peoples’ interest and ability to keep their eyes open late enough to catch their favorite funny man (be it Leno, Conan or Fallon). Jay Leno agreed and NBC pressed Conan O’Brien for his response. It came this afternoon in the form of a public (aka PR) statement. I’ll let you read it for yourself:

People of Earth:

In the last few days, I’ve been getting a lot of sympathy calls, and I want to start by making it clear that no one should waste a second feeling sorry for me. For 17 years, I’ve been getting paid to do what I love most and, in a world with real problems, I’ve been absurdly lucky. That said, I’ve been suddenly put in a very public predicament and my bosses are demanding an immediate decision.

Six years ago, I signed a contract with NBC to take over The Tonight Show in June of 2009. Like a lot of us, I grew up watching Johnny Carson every night and the chance to one day sit in that chair has meant everything to me. I worked long and hard to get that opportunity, passed up far more lucrative offers, and since 2004 I have spent literally hundreds of hours thinking of ways to extend the franchise long into the future. It was my mistaken belief that, like my predecessor, I would have the benefit of some time and, just as important, some degree of ratings support from the prime-time schedule. Building a lasting audience at 11:30 is impossible without both.

But sadly, we were never given that chance. After only seven months, with my Tonight Show in its infancy, NBC has decided to react to their terrible difficulties in prime-time by making a change in their long-established late night schedule.

Last Thursday, NBC executives told me they intended to move the Tonight Show to 12:05 to accommodate the Jay Leno Show at 11:35. For 60 years the Tonight Show has aired immediately following the late local news. I sincerely believe that delaying the Tonight Show into the next day to accommodate another comedy program will seriously damage what I consider to be the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting. The Tonight Show at 12:05 simply isn’t the Tonight Show. Also, if I accept this move I will be knocking the Late Night show, which I inherited from David Letterman and passed on to Jimmy Fallon, out of its long-held time slot. That would hurt the other NBC franchise that I love, and it would be unfair to Jimmy.

So it has come to this: I cannot express in words how much I enjoy hosting this program and what an enormous personal disappointment it is for me to consider losing it. My staff and I have worked unbelievably hard and we are very proud of our contribution to the legacy of The Tonight Show. But I cannot participate in what I honestly believe is its destruction. Some people will make the argument that with DVRs and the Internet a time slot doesn’t matter. But with the Tonight Show, I believe nothing could matter more.

There has been speculation about my going to another network but, to set the record straight, I currently have no other offer and honestly have no idea what happens next. My hope is that NBC and I can resolve this quickly so that my staff, crew, and I can do a show we can be proud of, for a company that values our work.

Have a great day and, for the record, I am truly sorry about my hair; it’s always been that way.

Yours,

Conan

Is that not a well-crafted statement or what? Here’s what you can learn about PR from this event and this statement:

• Online, news travels fast – and it travels quickest by people on social networks. Within an hour of the statement being sent to the “People of Earth” it was trending on Twitter feeds. For the most part, blogs were some of the first to carry it with online media coming in a close second. This is a chief reason why using an online news wire like ideaLaunch client, PRWeb, makes a lot of sense.
• Keep it sincere. One of the top complaints people have about official statements is that they sound as if they were crafted by a department (and they often are) rather than an individual. This release is Conan O’Brien through-and-through. The classic self-deprecating comment at the end seals it for anyone in doubt.
• Know your audience. This is important for all aspects of content marketing. Understand their issues (like not likely watching a late night program on Tivo) and communicate to them.
• Understand that it’s not all about you. While this was a statement from Conan about his participation in the NBC TV line-up, the point that is most driven home in this release is about the interests of the audience and the integrity of the show for their viewing pleasure. The concept of putting one’s ego to the side and speaking about what matters to the audience is something that every content marketer should remind themselves of.
• Nail down the facts. This statement reviews the situation and the history of The Tonight Show succinctly, giving the reader excellent context for the rationale behind his decision.
• Be a professional. Whining, name-calling and all-around bridge burning won’t get people on your side. Writing and acting with class always will.

With one, simple, well-crafted piece of PR writing, Conan O’Brien has a slew of “Team Conan” supporters that will likely follow him wherever he goes.

Image from TheHubCompany.com

When it comes to marketing a business, there are several tools you can use in your swiss army knife of promotion. At ideaLaunch, our primary focus is content marketing – strategizing, writing and creating online content that appeals to your audience, builds your reputation and increases the chances of someone coming across your business on a search engine results page. We do this through blogs, articles, tip centers, videos, podcasts and public relations.

Public relations? But isn’t that a whole separate field?

Because of the nature of information on the web, content marketing and public relations are well partnered together (in fact, some would correctly argue that PR and content marketing are sometimes one in the same). Just like a blog post or an article, a news release that is placed on an online wire like PRWeb (who happens to be an ideaLaunch client), has the capacity to attract potential customers and media, drive visits to your main website and influence your SEO. To be as effective as possible, a modern press release needs to utilize the same skills and tools we implement in every content marketing venture. For example, an online news release should:

• Be well-written with a target audience in mind
• Incorporate researched keywords that will perform well in an online search
• Use SEO-minded links of keywords or business names to an appropriate website (also known as anchor text)
• Include optimized content pieces like pictures, videos or podcasts that particularly appeal to those who use social media

Along with classic PR techniques on writing a news release, these content marketing aspects can simultaneously put your company’s news on the radar of media and potential customers. The next time you have a new product or service to announce, have hired a top executive, or are hosting a big event, considering putting PR into your promotional mix. If you need experienced professionals to assist, a certain content marketing agency is happy to help.

Brutal, eh?

Just one week later, Hyundai Canada posted this video on YouTube:

Admittedly, the video quality isn’t the greatest, but in this case, it was more important to be fast than polished. Hyundai did what all businesses that want to do well in content marketing should do:

1. Monitor: Stay on top of trends, especially if they’re even just remotely related to your industry.
2. React quickly: Our attentions are fleeting. If you want to connect to something trending on the Internet, you need to pull the trigger right away – otherwise you’re old news before you’re new news.
3. Use the medium: The bad parking job was a YouTube sensation – it only makes sense that Hyundai engages the same crowd using the same medium.
4. Promote: The team behind Hyundai’s video undoubtedly found out what media and top bloggers covered the original video and used social media-focused public relations tactics to promote Hyundai’s response. Through the PR lift from sites like The Globe and Mail and Mashable, the Hyundai response video now has well over 100,000 views is just four days.

They also did one more thing we hope companies aim for: Being the good guy.